Electronics. Korea is pretty much the Mecca of electronics. Samsung is here. LG is here. Both Hewlett-Packard and Energizer have Korea-based facilities. Iriver and SK Telecom are domestic-based companies that do serious sales just within Korea itself. This is one hooked up company. So much so that Korea's cell phone companies still use proprietary frequencies and encoding. Meaning that fancy new phone you bought in Yongsan probably won't function in America. Japan had been the more notorious country with this problem for travelers but recently has started to integrate worldwide carriers. Even the best VoIP software available comes at a premium for users in Korea. Skype has a pay-to-use feature that allows Skype users to call any... Show more

Rice. Come on, you know Korea has some good rice. Tell me you know this and we can get along. Quick review! So we have "밥" as a rice but primarily as a meal (which could entail any type of food). There's also the rice itself, "쌀". Moving on, let's get a country bumpkin's perspective on rice, shall we? Growing up in central Texas meant that rice took on a bit of a different form that what is the norm in Korea. We're talking Tex-Mex rice - Spanish rice - the yellow-redish with tomato goodness that isn't quite Mexican but certainly not Texan. I also enjoyed (and still do) Dirty rice - a Cajun staple from our border-neighbor Louisiana (or as some Texans say "that one state to the right"). Now there was also two other kinds of rice... Show more

Drinking Water. No, not quality. quantity. There is a serious void in the stomachs of Koreans. That void is water. I drink a boatload of water. Realistically I drink probably three liters of water a day on average. Oh and 3.8 liters to a gallon there, people. Most doctors recommend that at least 2 liters be consumed daily to simply replace the lost fluids by normal functions such as excretion, respiration, and perspiration. But if you consume about 2 liters of water in a day, then you're probably doing fine by most - and probably more than most. Most being Koreans. Koreans straight up do not drink water at meals. It's amazing. I go to fill people's water cups and they haven't even touched it. Mind you that we're eating Korean... Show more

Vegetarianism. If you are 1 in 5 billion people that are vegan (these are verifiable facts here, people), you must be: 1) Angry at something, or 2) Conscientious of something that doesn't quite sit with you. Either way, you have chosen a meat-free life that has almost exclusively alienated all of your closest friends and family. Great job! You will continue to live this lifestyle until you are a tired, old, cynical shell of a human being that is known more for vulgarity than eco-friendliness. Wow! I can't wait to subject my own children one day to this Hollywood-esque lifestyle! Hey, I'm okay with it. But many vegetarians react to their diet defensively almost like being accused of racism. "But I have lots of meat-eating... Show more

Size. I'm from Texas. It's true - everything in Texas is bigger. I wonder if the reverse is true for South Korea? Let's take a look. South Korea encompasses a skant 38,492 square miles - which makes it slightly bigger than the state of Indiana but slightly smaller than Kentucky. Woah~ that is small. What about population? Kentucky has roughly 4,500,000 residents while Korea has just under 50,000,000. That makes Texas roughly half the population of South Korea. So, Kentucky has 40,411 square miles of land with about 111 people per square mile. Texas fares a bit better with 268,601 square miles - that's roughly 93 people per square mile. Korea? 1300 people per square mile. Shall we have a chart? Oh man I love charts: Korea - 38,492... Show more